I do not trust any service provider on the net. I never provide my real name (except on irc), i do not use facebook or twitter, i think they are both fad’s and will go away as most others have in the past. I do not see the big deal.. In sweden we had something similar for small kids called lunarstorm, they would register ad do about everything that facebook does and with the same level of privacy. What most of the kids nowdays regret is still searchable and you can see kids at 6yrs that are now 16 years old complaining about privacy issues….

I am the same way. Under pressure from friends I signed up for a facebook account… under a handle, as usual.

When I got on to the internet the first thing I was told was not to include my real name, age, birthdate, location or other personally identifiable information in my username/email address. Then, I was told never to tell anyone on the internet who you are.

It was only very reluctantly and carefully that I first made online purchases, because they wanted to know these things. I still carefully used handles until sites started checking that your credit card name matched the name on the form. (I still get snail mail spam for some of my handles).

Myspace, Facebook, these things are fads. Personal web sites on which you can publish things you have written, drawn or links to things you like are not fads. These are popularly known as “blogs” today, but have been around forever (geocities, angelfire… that’s what these sites were used for). The other things facebook does is IM, mostly in an ICQ delayed delivery style. It’s pretty much a means of sharing contact lists. None of this is remarkable and the implementation leaves much to be desired.

It will pass; it will all pass, but privacy leaks are forever.

Perhaps no one is telling internet users these days that privacy is king and that they must guard their own. Using your real name on the internet? At what point did it stop being common practice to tell people that doing that is dangerous? I like to think that I, and my fellow geeks, are leading-edge cases. Yesterday I railed about privacy on the internet and everybody thought I was a kook. Today I rail about privacy on the internet and everyone shrugs and says “That’s just the way it is.” Maybe tomorrow, when a whole generation of people have felt the negative effects of being too liberal with sharing their information, maybe tomorrow when I rant and rave about privacy on the internet people will listen.

I don’t really get all those privacy discussions – it’s up to you whether you will disclose personal information – real name, email, phone (?!), street address – what kind of (social/entertainment) site asks about your street address (online store, perhaps yes) ? Country ? Maybe, but still, what’s the output – someone is going to send me localized spam ? In my native language, on a hard copy )) LOL. If some scammer is interested in my personal details, send me a PM, I will happily provide them, just out of curiosity.